It’s been a week of Castlevania, Castlevania, Castlevania. After finishing up my all souls playthrough of Aria of Sorrow, I switched over to the Castlevania Anniversary Collection and... well... finished the whole collection. I’d finished most of the games without save states in the past, but given the choice between…

It’s worth going back and playing the GBA games if you’re a fan of Super Metroid. Zero Mission is my favorite Metroid game, full stop. AM2R was worth the hype, too.

So, more like a fon-don’t.

I’d been asking for a Pepsi Blue comeback for 15 years. I managed to get a ridiculously overpriced 6-pack on Amazon and finally got some closure on this dream, long after my lumpy, shitty body stopped being able to handle drinking sugary soda on a regular basis.

“Whether ‘tis nobler in the ring to suffer the suplexes and piledrivers of outrageous fortune, or take arms rippling with outrageous muscle, and as is scripted pin them?”

Suikoden 1 was my first Suikoden game, just earlier this year. At least in my experience, as someone who still plays replays 16-bit RPGs, it still holds up. Collecting party members, building up your castle, and the variety in types of battles were fun twists on what I expected to be a game full of basic turn-based…

It’s exactly what it looks like: utter nonsense.

I used to work in public service and once spent at least 20 minutes talking to a man who was unemployed, but didn’t want to go on unemployment and be a financial drain on society. I kept insisting, “You paid for this. You worked. Part of your paycheck went to these programs in case this happened to you. This is what…

10,001 Maniacs.

The California State University system has had critical thinking as a mandatory lower-level general ed class since at least my freshman year in 2001. Mine covered syllogisms, logical fallacies, and recognizing when rhetorical devices are being used in place of substantive arguments. Didn’t quite cover everything you’d…

The closest I had was a segment on spotting quacky health supplements in middle school PE, and then a fairly standard critical thinking class in college. I feel like that was a strong enough intro to false info and bad arguments, but... yeah, I think even a one-semester high school course on fake news - evaluating…

It’s been a week of the Castlevania Advance Collection. I’ve had it less than a week, and I’m already most of the way to wrapping up all 4 games.

I don’t really need any visual improvements or QOL upgrades. The three GBA games are what I primarily think of when I think Castlevania, even as someone old enough to have traded NES carts with grade school friends to play the first three games. They’re mostly untouched, but the in-game loot drop tables and friendly…

And if Grohl says no, I’m gonna keep this one in my pocket in case King Missile needs to redo any of their album covers.

Photoshop out the baby so it’s just a penis going after the dollar

Nah, a lot of people, myself included, feel like Sonic games both encourage you to race through the stages and punish you for doing so without having the layout memorized. Game’s like...

I enjoyed even the mindless simplicity of those sections because it helped establish that I wasn’t just beating demon ass; I was rebuilding the world in the service of human beings. It made me feel like I was bringing them an era of peace by slowing the pace of the game down and making combat feel more like simple main…

Actraiser Renaissance was such a big surprise drop last week. The original Actraiser isn’t a game I usually think about when I’m compiling a list of all-time favorites, but it’s one I can’t go 5 years without replaying. Sad to hear they didn’t quite capture the tone of the original story - the “the people don’t need…

I really wish there was a simple class selection screen in CotM with no unlocking requirements. Instead, you have to finish the game once to get magician, then once as magician to get shooter, then once as shooter to get thief, and thief mode, with its ridiculously high drop rates, was easily my favorite playthrough…

Canceling the football game would mean we couldn’t feed the losing team to the worm.